


Keep Moving Forward

by carmillanegovanlis



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Amusement Park, F/F, F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmillanegovanlis/pseuds/carmillanegovanlis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla is working at her family's amusement park over the summer. Laura is a new employee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

May 20th, 7:45 am

Carmilla gazes out of the window of the black SUV as her, Perry, LaFontaine, Ell, and Will pass fields of grass that sparkle with dew from this morning’s showers. 

“I hope it doesn’t rain anymore today, I don’t want it to start pouring while we’re trying to fix up the park for next week’s opening.” LaF was riding in the front seat next to Perry, LaF’s arm was resting on the arm rest and Perry’s hand was on top of it.

“Well dear, I looked up the forecast as you asked me to and it didn’t say anything about it raining today.” 

“Yet here we are, it’s overcast and we are without any umbrellas.” Carmilla wasn’t excited about driving up to Dreamworld to open the park. Every summer it was the same boring 2 hour car ride, and when they finally got to there, she started working, for free she might add. Sure, the first summer she started working there two years ago was because she wanted to volunteer to help out Perry. In an unexpected turn of events, Perry’s parents died in a car crash that year and they left the park to her and LaF. Carmilla could see how difficult it was for her to cope so she and Will both decided to get jobs, it was in the summer after all so it’s not like they had school to worry about or anything. “Maybe there will be a thunderstorm and the lightning will strike me just as we’re getting out of the car so that I don’t have to deal with everything that’ll inevitably happen this summer.”

LaF looked into the rear view mirror directly at Carmilla. “Don’t be so dramatic. You act like you hate coming up here every year but really, you end up enjoying yourself. Don’t pretend like you don’t.”  
Carmilla sighed, “The summers before this have been different.” She glared at Will and Ell who were in the seats beside her. Ell’s hand was on Will’s thigh and Will’s arm was draped around her. Ell whispered something into Will’s ear and they both started  
laughing.

Carmilla had broken up with Ell two summers ago. They’d been dating for almost 3 years but they just started to grow apart. Carmilla could tell that Ell wasn't happy, and upon further investigation, she figured out that her and Will had had something going on without her knowledge for a little over a year prior. Seeing them like this made her want to throw up.

Will looked over at Carmilla and made a pouty face, “Kitty, don’t have such a bad attitude. You’re making some people uncomfortable,” He motioned to Ell. “Maybe this summer you’ll find someone who you can actually be friends with.”

“Maybe this summer is the summer that you’ll finally stop being a complete dick.” She snarled back.

“ENOUGH you two,” Perry was trying to concentrate on driving but the bickering in the back seat wasn’t helping anyone, “Will, need I remind you that the only reason I allowed you to bring Ell was because you promised LaF and I that you wouldn’t make this any harder than it needed to be. Now apologize to your sister.”

Will glared at Perry and without looking Carmilla in the eyes, he spat “Sorry Kitty, didn’t realize I was making things so difficult for you.”

Carmilla took her phone out of her pocket and unraveled her headphones. She put them in and decided to listen to her favorite rock music for the rest of the trip. She looked down at the bracelets on her arm and started playing with one of the charms that was dangling off of one of them. It was a charm that Ell had given to her. It was an anchor. Carmilla could hear Ell’s voice in her head saying ‘you’ll always be my anchor babe, you keep me grounded. I love you.’ The words lingered in her head for a while. She wondered if Ell had meant what she said.

She decided to look outside at the trees passing by. There were so many and they were all so gorgeous. The forests out here were pretty thick in comparison to where she lived with her family for the remainder of the year. She imagined herself getting lost in the trees, finding a spot in the middle of them all and just laying down in the grass and looking up at the sky.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With 30 minutes left in the car ride until they reached Dreamworld, Carmilla started thinking about what the possibilities could hold for her this summer. She popped her ear buds out before she asked Perry and Laf who was coming to work there this summer besides her and Will.

“Well, Danny’s coming back and we have a few new people starting; Betty, Kirsch, and Laura.”  
Carmilla hadn’t really been too fond of Danny. It was nothing really against her, their personalities just didn’t flow well together. Danny was pretty bossy and always wanted to have things her way, and Carmilla wasn’t one to take orders from anyone, especially not in her own family’s park.

“Laura just moved here from what I understand. And Betty and Kirsch have both lived up here for a while, they’ve actually come to the park a few times. Maybe you’ll recognize them when you see them.”

“I think I remember Kirsch, he was that guy who was always wearing those neon bro-tanks and sunglasses right?” Carmilla asked.

“That’s the one!”

“Right right, and Betty was the one who came into the park and asked for a job last year when we were fully staffed?”

“Yup, I was glad that we were able to give her a job this year, I felt bad having to turn her down before.”

“And what do you know about Laura besides the fact that she just moved here?”

“Not much actually, I just know that her application seemed more than respectable, she’s quite academic that one. Maybe you can introduce her to the area?”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far but I’ll talk to her. Feel out the situation.”

“Yeah you’ll feel out something all right.” Ell smirked.

“That’s not even the phrase at all. Let’s not.”

The car stopped.

“We’re here everyone. Time to get started.”

Carmilla got out of the car first. Ell was in the middle seat and she started scooting her way over to Carmilla’s side to follow her out of the car but before Ell could get out Carmilla slammed the door shut and the window hit Ell’s forehead.  
“Whoops, my bad!” Carmilla said with a smirk.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even though the park didn’t open again for another week, Perry liked to screen the new employees before they actually started their first day of work. Carmilla had the job of screening them, and today was the day the potential employees were coming in. It was almost 10 am and they weren’t meant to arrive until 11, so Carmilla figured she had a little time to get away. 

The amusement park was surrounded by a dense forest with a river flowing out just past it which lead to a small lake just inside the park itself. There were a few different paths that Carmilla found to walk through by the river over the years and she decided to go on one. She told Perry and LaF that she was leaving for a little bit and Perry made sure that she had her phone on her.

Carmilla left the park’s large metallic front gates, she was pretty upset at Will and she felt like she needed to de-stress before she hurt anyone more than she already had. She walked through the parking lot, reached the woods, and started making her way towards the river. She looked up at the sky as she walked, which was starting to clear up, and the sun was shining through some of the clouds which made the water in the river shimmer. She took in her surroundings, despite herself she really did enjoy coming up here in the summer. It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold which was the perfect temperature in her mind. After admiring the river for a while she decided to dip her feet in, she took off her shoes and stuffed her socks inside them and placed them a little  
further back from the river to keep them dry. Her bare feet were met with the texture of soft dirt and smooth rocks. As she sat down by the river, she put her feet in the water and felt the coolness of it relax her.

She picked up one of the rocks that was lying beside her and gently ran her thumb over its smooth surface, examining it to see if it would be good enough to skip. She decided that it was and she flicked it into the water, skipping it 3 times before it stopped with a plunk. The river was pretty wide, about 12 feet across and 2 feet deep, so she was able to skip it pretty nicely. She’d missed this place during the rest of the year, even if she didn’t like to admit it to the rest of her family. She allowed her muscles to relax and she tilted her head back and let the barely-peaking-out sun hit her face. She closed her eyes and listened to the birds chirping around her, singing songs that she wishes she could understand.

After about 30 minutes, she felt her toes start pruning and decided it was time to take her feet out of the water and go walk around a little bit more. She pulled her socks out of her shoes and pulled them over her feet, which were still wet, making the socks  
damp, and stuffed her feet into her shoes. The clouds overhead were practically all gone now and she took that as a good sign; she liked rain, but she didn’t like getting drenched in it.

She decided to take a look at her phone to make sure she still had some time left. 10:40 am. 20 minutes left. ‘Just enough time for a run’ she thought to herself. She put her phone back in her pocket and did some warm-up stretches before starting to run down the path following the direction of the flowing river. She enjoyed hearing the song of the water splashing on rocks as she passed. Carmilla didn’t run often, but she always found herself with the urge to do so when she went up North for the summer. Something about the clarity of the air and the music of the birds chirping and the water splashing really cleared her head, and running helped her release some of her pent-up frustration towards Will and her family life in general.

She felt the soil crunch under her feet as she ran. She always made sure to look down at the path in front of her instead of straight ahead because of the time that she tripped on a twig, fell sideways into the river, and gave herself a mild concussion hitting her head on the rocks on her way down. Will found her sprawled out floating down the river with a giant bruise on her head and, while he had been concerned, once he figured out what had happened he wouldn’t let her live it down. He thought it was hysterical. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.

She started thinking about all that shit that had happened in the car ride. It wasn’t really a big deal and to be honest, she shouldn’t be aggravated by the two of them anymore but she couldn’t help herself. Seeing them together just felt so wrong, Ell was supposed to be with her, not Will. It was all so backwards. She always knew Will fawned over her but never ever did she think that they would end up together. What did Will have that she didn’t have? She stopped running for a second to catch her breath. She wasn’t really in shape since she didn’t work-out except for in the summer. She was bent over, hands on her knees, when she looked up and saw something on the ground.

The light from the sun had caught an object that was just barely protruding from the soil about 3 feet in front of her. She walked over and bent down to pick it up. It was a silver dollar. She put it in her pocket thinking that she’d save it for later. Maybe she’d buy a slushee or something. While she was stopped she got her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. 10:57 am. ‘Shit,’ she thought ‘I better get my ass back before Perry has it out with me.’ And with that she took in some deep breaths and ran the rest of the way back to the park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you wanna talk to me about this au feel free to leave a comment on here or on my tumblr at tinygaycarm. c:


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla gets acquainted with the new employees and takes a special interest in Laura.

May 20th 10:59 am

As Carmilla approaches Dreamworld she spots Danny talking to three other people just outside the entrance. She assumes that they’re the new potential employees. Carmilla doesn’t really see the point in interviewing them because she knows that they’re all going to get the job anyways but it’s what Perry wants so she obliges.

“Hey,” Carmilla says to Danny as she approaches, “What are you doing here? It’s interview day and you’re not a new employee.” She’s a bit out of breath from running.

“Well I wanted to meet the new recruits! Just because you don’t take the initiative to make new friends doesn’t meant that I don’t.”Carmilla scoffs, ‘Who needs friends?’ she thinks to herself.

“Carmilla, this is Kirsch,” she gestures to the lone guy in the group, he’s quite tall, maybe as tall as Danny, wearing a black muscle shirt, sunglasses, khaki shorts, and sandals. He smiles at her and sticks his hand out to shake Carmilla’s, she returns the gesture. “This is Betty,” she points to one of the other girls in the group, she’s a bit taller than Carmilla, wearing a pink crop top, jean shorts, and flip flops. She’s texting on her phone and doesn’t even acknowledge Carmilla’s presence. “And this is Laura.” She points to the last person in the group. She’s shorter than Carmilla, has her hair in a bun, and is wearing a light button up along with some shorts and sneakers. She smiles at Carmilla and waves.

“Listen it’s great to meet you all but we should probably head inside. I was supposed to have started interviewing you guys already so let’s go.” Carmilla leads the way in through the front gates and makes her way towards Perry and LaF who are by the front office discussing something. When they see Carmilla approaching they stop their conversation and direct their attention towards her.

“So I have the new employees here,” Carmilla gestures behind her where it looks like Danny is telling them all a little bit about the park and what to expect if they get the job. “I’m going to start interviewing them if that’s ok with you two.”

“Actually you’re a little behind schedule.” Perry says with a furrow in her brow. Carmilla knows that she doesn’t like it when she gets behind but that was sort of out of her control.

“Yeah I know, I’m sorry I lost track of time. I’ll try to make the interviews as quick as possible.” Carmilla usually didn’t like taking orders from people but, she had a soft spot in her heart for her adoptive parents Perry and LaF. They’d taken her and Will in when nobody else would and for that, she’s eternally grateful.

“Well ok, but make sure you do a thorough job kiddo.” LaF adds.

“Will do.” Carmilla yells over her shoulder as she walks back towards the new employees.

“You’re going to start the interviews now right? I mean it is a little past time…”

“Why yes I am Danny,” Carmilla says with a fake smile on her face, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t remind me I was behind, I’m already well aware.” She motions to Kirsch, “You’re up first.” Carmilla leads Kirsch into the front office to conduct the interview leaving Danny outside with Laura and Betty. The last thing Carmilla heard as she closed the door behind Kirsch was Danny telling both of them about the awards she had won in her track championship earlier this year.

“Take a seat Kirsch, this shouldn’t take too long,” She motioned to the chair in front of the desk that she was now sitting at. Kirsch sat down and took off his sunglasses. ‘At least he’s not one of those dudes who wears their sunglasses inside’ Carmilla thought to herself. “So tell me, why do you want to work here at Dreamworld?”

“Well you know I’ve been here a few times before and I think it’s a really cool park you guys got running. Plus I heard that the chef position was open and I was really hoping I could get it. Not many people know this about me but I really love cooking and I’m sure I could do a great job as your chef. My specialty is grilled cheese.”

“Well coincidentally we actually sell grilled cheese here so that’s fantastic.” A little bit of sarcasm snuck its way into Carmilla’s tone of voice.

“Uh… yeah, and I’m really great at working with people.”

“Ok but everyone says that in interviews for jobs where they’re required to work with others. How do I know that you’re not just lying to me to get the job?”

“If you want to go back out there and ask Laura, Betty, and Danny what they think of me, I’m sure they’ll tell you that they think I’m a rad guy. I’m just naturally really great with people, have been since I was a little kid.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes, “Right, okayyyy. On to the next question; have you had any experience working in a similar environment before? Specifically a kitchen since you said that’s where you’d like to work here?”

Kirsch’s eyes lit up, “Yes actually I have quite a bit of experience working in the kitchen. My dad owns one of the restaurants in the next town over and I’ve been working as a cook there for the past couple years. He’s always told me that I’m one of the best he has.”

“I mean ok but he is your father, isn’t he kind of required to say that?”

“But that’s not the only work experience I’ve had. The past few months I’ve branched out and gotten a job at a gourmet restaurant downtown and I haven’t had one complaint since I’ve been there. In fact I’ve gotten a couple compliments from the diners, so I think it’s safe to say that I know what I’m doing.”

“Fair enough,” Carmilla stated, she didn’t really feel like keeping this interview going any longer, he was going to get the job anyways right? What’s the point? “I think we’re done here Kirsch,” he picked up his sunglasses off the table and placed them back on his head as Carmilla stood up to open the door to invite in the next candidate. As Kirsch left she figured he mouthed something to the others because Danny smirked and Laura looked at Carmilla, she seemed a little intimidated. As usual, Betty was still staring at her phone.

“Betty, you’re up next.” 

Betty slowly looked up from her phone and walked into the office where Carmilla was waiting. She slumped down in the chair opposite the desk, just as Kirsch had done, but she sat down before Carmilla even closed the door or invited her to sit.

“Ok so, how does this whole interview thing work?” Betty asked, seeming a little annoyed that she even had to be here, “Do I give you honest answers or do I give you the answers that you want to hear?”

Carmilla thought this was a bit weird, usually when people come in for interviews they’re not so… abrasive? She could visibly tell that Betty was uninterested in the job in the first place, she was picking at her nails and she hadn’t put her phone away. It buzzed and she looked down at her phone and quickly answered the text message.

“Well I’d appreciate it if you’d put your phone away first of all.” She glared at Betty. Betty sighed but she did as she was asked. “Thank you, now I’m going to ask you a couple questions and I just need you to give me answers to them. Answer honestly. First question: why do you want to work here?”

“Frankly I don’t, I’m just doing this to get my dad off of my back. He’s always complaining that I don’t put enough effort into things and he told me that I needed to get a summer job or I could move out.”

‘Well that was pretty honest.’ Carmilla thought. “Ok, do you even know what you would want to do here?”

“I don’t know, maybe I could operate the Ferris wheel? That looks like the least amount of work and that’s what I’m looking for.”

“Ok, we can arrange that.” Carmilla isn’t too thrilled about Betty’s attitude but if she was in her situation she’d be the same way so she can’t really blame her. “I guess that’s all I really need to ask you. You can go back outside.” Betty stood up and walked out of the door, getting her phone back out in the process. Carmilla followed her out of the door.

“And lastly, Laura, you’re up.” Laura looked a bit less intimidated than she had before. Maybe Danny told her something to calm her down. She walked into the room and waited until Carmilla had closed the door and offered her the chair before she sat down.

“This shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.” Carmilla says in an effort to try to calm Laura’s nerves and it seems to work. She remembers what it’s like to go to job interviews, although she hasn’t been to one in a couple years, they can be scary. “So the first thing I’m going to ask you is why do you want to work here?”

“Well I just moved here and I don’t really know anybody yet. My dad talked to Perry and LaF about getting a job here in order to try and make some friends. I was just kinda forced into this move and he thinks that it would be a good idea if I tried to make some new friends out here. Might help make things a little less difficult for me. Plus I really love amusement parks, and this one looks really really cool. I really like that you have an area where people can ride around in boats, I love the water.”

“Great well that position is actually available so it looks like you’ve got it.” Carmilla can see Laura start to grow a little more relaxed. “One other question, when I was interviewing Kirsch, he said that he’s a real people-person and he’s pretty confident that you, Betty, and Danny think he’s a ‘rad dude’ to quote what he said. Would you agree with that?”

Laura laughed nervously, “Uhm, I mean he’s fine yeah, I guess you could say that about him.”

Carmilla smiled for the first time that day, “Ok, that’s all I have to ask you. You can go back outside.”

Laura stood up and Carmilla followed her out of the door of the office. Laura went back to join Danny, Betty, and Kirsch in their group and Carmilla went to go talk to Perry and LaF to inform them that the interviews were over. She found them standing in the same place they had been before she started the interview, talking about the same thing she assumed. Again, they stopped talking when she approached and they turned to look at her.

“So the interviews are done. I think I made up for the time too.”

“It looks like you did,” Perry smiled at her, “So on to the tour?”

“Yep, I was just making sure everything’s ready for it. Looks like it is.”

Carmilla turned around and headed back towards the other now-employees of Dreamworld. Danny seemed to be focusing most of her attention towards Kirsch, which didn’t really surprise Carmilla in the slightest. Betty was still on her phone and that left Laura pretty much on her own, although Kirsch was trying to add her to the conversation occasionally. When Carmilla approached them they stopped their conversing and directed their attention towards her. Betty even put her phone down this time.

“So this is the part where I give you guys a tour of the place and after that I’ll show you each to the places you’ll be working and I’ll give you instructions on how to operate any machinery that you may need assistance with. So let’s go.”

Carmilla lead the group around the amusement park, detailing the inner-workings of the system they have here; opening is at 9 am and closing is at 8 pm on weekdays and 9 pm on weekends. 15 minute breaks are allowed every 3 hours, and they can also be saved up. Lunch is at 1 pm and they have another break at 7 pm to eat dinner. Staff get 50% off of all food and drinks. She also gave them the history of the amusement park, how it’s been around since the 1950s but the technology has been updated since then. Park maintenance is pretty routine. She also went into detail about who does what around the park. Will is head of security and Ell helps him out if it’s needed. Perry is the park manager, although she tells them that they shouldn’t bother Perry with minor things, they should direct those at her, and LaF is the maintenance person.

While the tour is going on, she hears Danny talking Kirsch’s ear off, and she assumes that she’s taken a liking to him. ‘Whatever,’ she thinks to herself, ‘as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their work I couldn’t care less.’

“And that concludes the tour.” Carmilla finishes. She turns around and sees that Laura had a notepad and pen out and she had pages of notes. ‘At least someone was paying attention to what I was saying.’ she thought. “You guys start work in a week, so May 27th will be your first official day here. Feel free to stop buy earlier than that if you have any questions or you can call the front office during work hours and someone will be there to answer your inquiry then. As of now do any of you have any questions about anything?”

Laura raised her hand.

“Laura?”

“Yeah so, do we have to wear uniforms or is there some kind of dress code that we have to follow?”

“Actually no, you can wear whatever you want really, the only thing we require is that in the kitchen, you have to wear a hat, and no matter where you work, you have to wear a name tag so that customers know how to address you.” Laura was frantically writing down everything Carmilla said as she was talking, Carmilla chuckled.

“So one more thing before you guys leave, I want to show you each to where you’ll be working so you can get a little familiar with it before your first day starts. Kirsch you’ll be-“

Danny cut her off, “I can show Kirsch the kitchen since, you know, I work there too.”

“Fine.” Carmilla stated, “Less work for me. As for both of you,” she pointed at Betty and Laura, “Follow me.” She took both of them to the Ferris wheel first where Betty would be working. Carmilla took Betty over to the controls and showed her how everything worked. 

“You can change the speed but remember not to make it go too fast or too slow, usually a medium speed is the best but you can change it up if you’d like.” Betty looked a little bit overwhelmed. It was obvious that this was more work than she thought it was going to be. “I’ll leave you here to practice running this for a few minutes while I show Laura where she’ll be working.”

Carmilla lead Laura over to the small lake that was supplied by the river. There was a small dock on one side of the lake and there was a line of about 5 boats to the right of it. They were all tied to stakes in the dirt on the shore. “This is where you’ll be working,” Carmilla gestures to the dock, “whenever someone comes up to use one of the boats, they’ll hand you $0.50 and then you just have to untie one of the boats for them and give them one of these paddles,” she points to the set of paddles next to the dock, “Usually they’re allowed as much time as they want in the boats but if they’re in there for too long and there are other people waiting, then we have to ask them to let other guests have a turn. When they bring the boat back in, your job is to tie it back to one of the stakes and get their paddle back from them. Got it?”

“I think so.” Laura says as she continues to scribble down the information on her notepad.

“If you ever have any questions you can come ask me, or Perry, or LaF, or Will, although I wouldn’t really recommend asking Will because he can be a bit of an asshole but other than that.”

Laura laughed. “Ok, thank you. You know I’ve always really liked the water and riding in boats in general, so I was really happy when you told me that this job was available.”

“You do know that you’re not really going to RIDE in the boats though right? You’re just there to monitor the guests.”

Laura’s face fell, “Oh well, I mean I figured that but, I hoped-“

Carmilla lightly nudged Laura, “Maybe we can figure something out. Usually the park gets pretty dead at night so maybe on one of those nights we can let you on one of the boats.”

Laura’s face beamed, “Really? That’d be great! Thank you.”

After Carmilla and Laura were done at the boats, they went back and retrieved Betty, who seemed like she had gotten the hang of things, at least relatively, and they met back with Danny and Kirsch up near the front of the park.

“Ok you guys are free to go I think. Let me just check in with LaF and Perry and see if they want to tell you guys anything before you leave.”

Carmilla walked back to the front office and saw that Perry and LaF weren’t outside anymore, she looked through the window and saw Perry on the phone, and she looked a bit distraught so Carmilla thought she wouldn’t bother her. She decided to look for LaF instead. She found them near the roller coaster with Ell. It looked like they were just trying to clean up some of the circuitry in the controls for it. They glanced up as Carmilla drew near. 

“Well look who the cat dragged in.” Ell sneered.

Carmilla really wondered if Ell ever really loved her, or even liked her at all. Ever since she started dating Will she has been acting like a completely different person. Maybe this is who she was all along and Carmilla just didn’t know. “I’m actually not here to talk to you but thanks.” She said with very evident annoyance in her voice. “So LaF I’m done giving the tour, should I just let them leave now or is there something else you guys wanted me to do?”

“Why didn’t you ask Perry?” LaF says, they don’t look annoyed, just confused.

“She was on the phone and she looked like she was having some kind of crisis so I thought it best to not disturb her.”

“Uh oh.” LaF said, “Well good call on that. I think it should be fine for them to go home. Just make sure they know that they can ask us questions if they can think of any before the park opens next week. I want to make sure they’re prepared for it.”

“Yeah I got that covered. Alright I’ll let them know they can leave.” Carmilla turned around and headed back towards the front entrance where everyone was gathered. They were all discussing how they thought working at Dreamworld would be and Danny was assuring them that it would be fun.

“When I first started working here I wasn’t really too sure if I’d like it, I mean Carmilla isn’t the most sociable person and she’s basically our boss but, it’s pretty alright.”

“Ahem.” Carmilla cleared her throat right as Danny finished. Danny didn’t look embarrassed though. “So it looks like you’re all free to go. Make sure that if you have any questions or if you just want to come back and visit, you know you’re welcome to. You can call us during work hours too if you’d like. Perry will mostly likely answer your call. I’ll see you guys next week then.”

As they turned to leave, Carmilla remembered Perry and LaF asking her if she’d volunteer to show Laura around town a little bit since she was new. Laura didn’t seem to be too bad so she figured she would.

“Wait, Laura,” Laura turned around at the mention of her name, she looked a bit confused, “LaF and Perry wanted me to ask you if you would like me to show you around town a little bit, since you’re new and all they thought you might want someone to get you acquainted with the area. If you do I’ll be here.”

Laura smiled, “That’s very nice of you and I think I’ll take you up on that offer actually. When can you give me the grand tour?”

“How about tomorrow? 12 pm sound like a good time?”

“Sure. See you tomorrow.” Laura turned back around and left with the other employees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to update! I hope this chapter was worth the wait for anyone who stuck around. As always you can message me on here or on my tumblr at tinygaycarm. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Carmilla shows Laura around town.

May 20th 1:07 pm

 

After the employees left, Carmilla decided that she wanted to go into town to get something to eat. She thought that it was best to inform LaF and Perry that she was leaving so that they didn’t freak out when she wasn’t around. So, she made her way towards the front office again in hopes that they’d both be there so that she could talk to them, but alas, when she looked through the window she saw that Perry was still on the phone and she looked even more disgruntled then when Carmilla had seen her the last time. Again, she decided it best to not disturb her so she went looking for LaF. She looked around and finally spotted them working on the bumper cars – which is where Carmilla mainly worked. It looked like they were testing the cars to make sure each of them was working properly, and when they saw Carmilla approaching, they hopped out of the car they were testing and walked over to where Carmilla was.

“Hey LaF, so Perry looks like she’s still busy but I just wanted to inform you both that I’m going to go into town to get something to eat. I’ll probably stay there for a couple hours, but I have my phone with me in case either of you need something.”

“Ok, that sounds fine.” LaF said, a little disgruntled. “I should probably go check on Perry soon huh? I was hoping whatever was going on was done by now, I’ll head over there right now.” And with that, LaF began walking towards the front of the amusement park with Carmilla close behind. LaF quietly entered the front office, as to try to not disturb Perry while she was on the phone, and Carmilla continued walking out of the park’s front gates.

Dreamworld was in the middle of a pretty small town. The population was about 1,500 people which meant that there wasn’t really a whole lot to do. In the main area of the town, about a 5 minute walk from Dreamworld, there was a gas station, a movie theatre, a couple of restaurants, an elementary school (grades k-8), a highschool and a couple neighborhoods surrounding the schools. And next to the elementary school, there was a park. It was pretty small, but it was one of Carmilla’s favourite places to go during the months that she spent up here for the summer. There was a swing set, which was Carmilla’s absolute favourite, a jungle gym, a teeter-totter, and a picnic table with a roof around it as to block the sun and rain.

When Carmilla arrived in town, she made her way towards the gas station with the money she had found on the ground earlier, as well as a couple dollars she had in her pocket. She couldn’t really get a proper meal with this money, but she didn’t mind. She hadn’t felt like asking for money from LaF or Perry since they were both a little tightly wound due to today’s events. Although they were normally like that the first week or so that the park was opened. Perry was always worried that they wouldn’t get any business since the town’s so small, but year after year they’ve earned enough revenue to keep the park going for another summer. Carmilla understood Perry’s concern, but she wished that she would tone it down sometimes. Carmilla wondered if Perry was capable of doing that.

Carmilla opened the glass door to the gas station and was greeted by the manager with a “Hello Carmilla! Glad to see you’re back in town for the summer.” She returned his kindness with a smile and proceeded to make her way to the back of the store where the slushee machine was. She took a 16 oz cup from the cup holders underneath the machine and proceeded to fill it with the blue kind, which was her favourite. She took a lid and a straw from next to the machine and placed the lid onto the cup and the straw through the section in the middle of the lid, allowing her to take a drink. She did, and she couldn’t help but feel nostalgic. She made her way to the chip isle and decided on a bag of cool ranch Doritos. She took her items up to the counter, using the coin she had found earlier and another dollar to pay, and left the store.

She decided to walk to the park and sit at the picnic table to enjoy her food, and when she was done, she threw the Doritos bag in the trash can next to the table, and made her way towards the swings, leaving her slushee on the picnic table. Since nobody else was around she wasn’t worried about anything happening to it. The sun was in the perfect position in the sky and while Carmilla swayed on the swing, she looked up at the sky and at the bright white clouds that filled it. She always really enjoyed time by herself because she felt like she wouldn’t be judged for doing things she liked. Sure, maybe looking up at the clouds and pretending they were funny shapes and swinging on swings at a playground were a little childish, but she enjoyed them. The park was one of the only places she ever felt truly happy.

About 20 minutes passed and she decided to stop swinging and go for a walk. She took what was left of her slushee from the picnic table and started walking around town. She started thinking about what she would do with Laura tomorrow. She had planned that they meet at 12 pm so that they could get lunch together and then after that she didn’t really know. Maybe she would show her around the highschool, since that’s where she would be attending this fall. And even though the school was closed for the summer, Carmilla knew how to get into the building without a key. She’d been here multiple summers and there had been a lot of downtime so, to ease her boredom she liked to explore. By now she knew almost everything there was to know about this town. She’d spent many days walking its streets and finding out little secrets about the buildings and about the people who lived in them. She mostly kept this kind of stuff to herself, now that she didn’t have Ell, or someone else really close to her anymore. Maybe Laura could be the person she shared her secrets with.

And while she was thinking about Laura, Carmilla realized she didn’t give her a place to meet up the next day, so she made her way back to Dreamworld in hopes that Perry or LaF had her phone number or email address somewhere in their files. When she arrived, she didn’t see Perry or Laf outside, so she thought she’d go into the office. She looked through the window and saw them talking, but decided that she would interrupt them. She knocked on the door a few times and LaF answered.

“So I just realized that I don’t have Laura’s phone number or anything. I told her that I’d show her around tomorrow but I-“

“So you are going to show her around! That’s wonderful honey.” Perry beamed. She was excited that Carmilla was finally taking initiative with someone again. “LaF, could you check the filing cabinet to see if we have Laura’s number? I’m pretty sure it’s in there somewhere.”

LaF sighed, but did as they were told. It had been a long day for all of them and Carmilla assumed that they were just tired from working so much today. LaF searched through the filing cabinet and after a couple minutes, they pulled out a folder and handed it to Carmilla. The tab on the file said ‘Hollis, Laura’ so Carmilla guessed her number would be inside. She searched through the file for a minute, found Laura’s number, got her phone out of her pocket and typed it in, saved it, and handed the file back to LaF who put the file back in the cabinet.

“Thanks.” Carmilla said. She left the office after that to allow LaF and Perry to continue their conversation. They didn’t seem like they were mad at each other or anything, but she thought it best to give them both their space. She walked to a bench about 10 feet away from the office and pulled out her phone to text Laura where they would meet the next day.

_C: Hey Laura, this is Carmilla. I realized that I forgot to tell you where we should meet tomorrow, so I got your number from Perry. I hope that’s ok!_

_L: Hi Carmilla, no problem. Where did you want to meet?_

_C: I was thinking I could actually pick you up at your house… not that I have a car but, we could walk. If that’s ok._

_L: Sounds great! I’ll see you at 12 tomorrow then! My address is 213 Sycamore Ln._

_C: Ok, I’ll see you then._

 

May 21st 11:30 am

 

Carmilla woke up to the sound of her alarm. Yeah she’d only given herself 30 minutes to get ready and walk to Laura’s, but she didn’t really need that much time to get ready. She dragged her feet out from under the covers and lazily sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, before turning the alarm off. She stood up and slowly walked over to her closet and got out a pair of black skinny jeans, underwear, a bra, some socks, her black vans shoes, and a maroon t-shirt. Before getting dressed, she walked to the bathroom across the hall from her room, used the toilet and brushed her teeth and hair. She also splashed her face with cold water in an attempt to wake her up more. It worked a little bit. She walked back to her bedroom and got dressed. She put her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and walked out of her room downstairs where Will and Ell were eating breakfast in the kitchen. She tried to avoid looking at them as she got a glass of water and drank it, but they were being obnoxious, as usual.

“Getting ready for your hot date today there kitty?” Will said maliciously.

“Yeah, whatever.” Carmilla didn’t even feel like dignifying his comment with a response, so she didn’t really.

Ell nudged Will, “Don’t be so hard on her.” She said to him. Which surprised Carmilla and Will both. Why was Ell being nice? Carmilla figured she was up to something but didn’t investigate further. Instead she put her dirty glass in the sink and made her way into the living room where Perry and LaF were sitting, and she informed them that she was going out to show Laura around. They wished her luck, gave her $20 (which Carmilla thought was quite generous), and told her to be back by dark. Carmilla thought that was an awful long time to be out with someone she barely knew but, she didn’t argue. She’d rather be out with Laura than at home with Will.

Carmilla started making her way towards Laura’s house, which was in the same town as Dreamworld, it was in the neighborhood right next to the highschool. She pulled out her phone as she walked and texted Laura that she was on her way, to which Laura replied ‘Great! I’ll be waiting outside.’

Carmilla rounded the corner of Laura’s street to see her sitting down on the porch steps in front of her house. She had a very nice house, it was white for the most part, with some dark red accents here and there. There was a white Avalon car in the driveway, which she assumed to be Laura’s fathers. There was a bumper sticker on the back which read ‘My child’s an honour student at Richdale high!’ which Carmilla assumed was Laura’s old school. She thought it was nice that her dad seemed to care so much. When she approached the house, Laura stood up from the steps and met her at the end of the walkway.

“Ready to go, cupcake?”

“Uhm… yeah. Why’d you call me cupcake?”

“I uh, do that a lot. I don’t really have a reason for it. If it bothers you I can stop-“

“No no, that’s not necessary. I like it.”

“Alright cupcake. Whatever you say.” Carmilla said with a smile. Laura smiled back. “So, I figured we could eat lunch? Since it’s about noon. Sound good to you?”

“Yeah that sounds great actually. I’m starving.”

And with that, Carmilla lead Laura into town to her favourite restaurant. Interestingly enough, it was the restaurant that Kirsch’s dad owned. Carmilla had known Kirsch and his family for years, but yesterday during the interviews, she had just decided to give him a hard time, which Kirsch knew. Carmilla opened the wooden door to the restaurant and allowed Laura to go in first before her. She figured she wouldn’t really need to ask Laura what kind of food she preferred because, well, they served just about everything here. From deli sandwiches to Chinese food. It might seem a little weird, and it was, because they managed to cook everything there perfectly.

The host led Carmilla and Laura to a booth near a window at the front of the restaurant. It was Carmilla’s favourite table, which they knew because of how often she dined here during her summer visits. They sat across from each other and were given menus to look over. Carmilla didn’t need to look in order to know what she was going to get, but she let Laura take her time mulling over the choices.

“You already know what you’re gonna get huh?”

“Cupcake, I’ve been coming here for years.” Carmilla said with a smile. “They’ve probably already started boiling my pasta.”

Laura smirked, “Oh so you’re a revered customer? I didn’t know I was walking into a restaurant with the queen herself.”

Carmilla laughed, “Yeah yeah smarty-pants. Do you know what you want?”

“I think so yeah.”

Carmilla called over their waitress and they both ordered their food. Carmilla ordered fettuccine alfredo and a water and Laura ordered nachos and a grape soda. While they waited for their food to arrive, Carmilla decided to ask Laura a couple questions about herself just so she’d be able to understand her a little better.

“So, I know you moved here because your dad got a job, right?” Laura nodded. “But you said something about not really having a choice to move here? Why’s that?”

“Well, my dad got fired from his last job, and there was no income coming in to support ourselves. I tried to get a job to help, but it wasn’t enough, and when he got a job offer here, there was really no hesitation on his end to move.”

“On his end?”

“Yeah, I mean ideally I wouldn’t have moved here. All of my friends and family were back there and I wouldn’t have just up and left if I’d had the choice. My grandma offered to let me stay with her while my dad moved here but, I thought he’d probably get lonely and I knew that I’d miss him, so I bit the bullet and moved here with him.”

“I gotcha. And what about school?”

“What about it?”

“Well how does the whole transfer thing work? It seems like a real pain in the ass.”

“Asking the tough questions huh?” Laura thought for a moment about how she was going to explain it. She explained how the schooling system from where she was from wasn’t too different from the one here, the graduation requirements were still the same, luckily, so she was able to easily transfer all of her credits over to the new highschool. She had one year left of school before going off to college, and she said that she wanted to become a journalist. Which Carmilla found quite interesting.

Their food arrived and they both ate their food while discussing different aspects of Laura’s life as well as Carmilla’s. Carmilla told Laura about her situation with Ell since she had been dying to talk about it with someone ever since all of that went down. It was just so _weird_ to her that that was going on. Laura seemed to understand and helped talk her through a couple of things which Carmilla really appreciated. They got the chance to talk about what they each wanted to do after highschool, in detail. Along with becoming a journalist, Laura wanted to move to NYC. She said she’d always wanted to live in the city. Oddly enough, that was also where Carmilla wanted to move. Not to do journaling of course, but she wanted to get the chance to work at one of the universities up there, perhaps teaching philosophy.

After they finished eating and Carmilla paid for both of their meals, even though Laura _insisted_ that she didn’t have to do that, they walked to the highschool that Laura would be attending.

“Would you like a tour?” Carmilla asked.

“That would be great but, how are we going to get into the building? It’s closed for the summer isn’t it?”

“Cupcake, you can’t possibly think that after all the summers I’ve spent up here that I wouldn’t know a thing or two about this town.” Laura just looked at her with a confused expression and Carmilla made a motion at her indicating she should follow her. She did as she was told. They made their way around to the back of the building where there was a few poles leading up the side of the building to the roof. Carmilla started to climb one of them and told Laura to follow her. By the time she was about half way up, she looked down and saw that Laura hadn’t budged from the place she had been standing on the ground.

“What’s wrong cupcake? Can’t climb?”

“No, I can, it’s just, these pipes don’t look very sturdy…”

“Trust me, they are. Can’t you see me climbing on them right now? You’re even smaller than me, so this definitely shouldn’t be a problem.” Laura didn’t look convinced. “I promise you these pipes won’t give. I’ve been up here dozens of times.” Laura sighed and followed her up the pipes. When they reached the top, Laura said that it wasn’t as scary as she thought it would be.

“See, I told you cupcake, you just gotta trust me.”

Laura smiled. “Ok, so now that we’re on the roof, how do we get in the building? Is there like some secret lose panel or something? Do we need like, rope to climb down? Or-“

“Whoa slow down there Inspector Gadget.” Carmilla laughed. “Just two minutes ago you were afraid of climbing up a perfectly sturdy pole and now you’re talking about breaking panels on the roof and sliding down a rope?”

“Well what else are we gonna do?”

“You watch too many movies.” Carmilla said. “There’s a door right over here. They never lock it because it’s on the roof and, who would come up on the roof to break into a school? So, we can just go through there.” Carmilla opened the door that led into the building. She got out her phone to use as a flashlight because the stairway leading up to the roof was pretty dark. There weren’t really any windows along the way. After they both reached the bottom of the steps, Carmilla lead her into the main area of the school. It was bright enough in there that they could see without Carmilla’s phone so she put it away and started showing Laura the classrooms. Of course she hadn’t actually attended this school before, but she spent quite a bit of time investigating the classrooms and she’d gotten a pretty good idea of what was what.

She ended the tour at the front office, which she picked the lock to to get inside. She went behind the front desk and grabbed a map for Laura and found a pen and started writing on the map, reminding Laura of where all of the classrooms were. When she was done, she handed it to Laura and they made their way back to the roof.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, that was a lot to take in. I kinda wish I’d brought my notepad with me.”

Carmilla laughed, “But I wrote everything down for you on the map. Plus, that was an informal tour, I’m sure when you actually start here in the fall you can get someone to show you around properly.” Laura seemed to go along with this idea and so they both climbed back down off of the roof.

“Where are we going next?” Laura asked.

“Well, do you see that park over there?” Carmilla pointed across the street next to the elementary school. Laura followed where she was pointing with her gaze. “Well that’s my favourite place in this whole town. Let’s go over there.” They started walking in that direction.

“Why’s that you’re favourite place in this town?” Laura asked, curious.

“Well, it’s really the only place I have to myself. You should really consider yourself lucky that I’m showing it to you to be honest.”

Laura smiled, “Well now that I know its importance, I feel honoured.” She dramatically clutched at her chest.

“Whatever smartass.” Carmilla said jokingly, nudging Laura.

When they got to the park, Carmilla went straight for the swings and Laura followed suit. When she’d initially met Carmilla, she didn’t think she’d be as sweet as she turned out to be. It was refreshing for her. She looked over at Carmilla in this moment and she could tell that she was genuinely enjoying herself, and Laura really appreciated her bringing her to this spot. It _was_ very nice, kind of calming even. After a while, Carmilla stopped swinging and decided to lay in the grass to watch the clouds. Laura laid next to her.

“Look at that one, it looks kind of like a turtle.” Carmilla said, pointing to one of the bright white clouds in the sky.

“Turtle? I think it looks more like a foot.” Laura chuckled.

“Well I guess you’ve got some turtle shaped feet there then because that is most _definitely_ a turtle.” Carmilla turned to Laura and smiled.

“Whatever.” Laura said, lightly rustling Carmilla’s hair.

They laid there and debated over cloud shapes for close to an hour. It would have been longer, but Laura’s phone went off. It sounded like she was talking to her dad, who really wanted her to come back home. It wasn’t even that late, but Carmilla guessed he just wanted to make sure she was ok. She assured him that she was, but he wanted her to come home.

After she hung up the phone, she said “Sorry, I really want to stay out more and hang out but my dad wants me to come home. Do you think that we could maybe continue this at some point later?”

“Sure cupcake. Let me at least walk you home.” Carmilla smiled, standing up and brushing the leaves off of her pants and extending a hand to Laura to help her get up.

“I think I’d like that very much.” Laura said, returning the smile that Carmilla gave her.

As they walked home, Carmilla couldn’t help but feel happy. She’d genuinely enjoyed her time out with Laura today, much more than she had expected to, and she thought that Laura felt the same way, because when they were half way back to her house, Laura moved a little closer to Carmilla and reached out for her hand to hold it. Carmilla allowed it. It was a nice kind of intimacy that she hadn’t experienced with anyone in a while. When they reached Laura’s house, she let go of her hand and waved her goodbye.

“I’ll text you later.” Carmilla called after her.

When Laura reached her door, she turned around and said, “Alright! You better!” before going inside.

As she turned around to go home, Carmilla smiled to herself. Today had been a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry my update schedule has been very inconsistent but I've been doing my best. If you have any questions or comments you can leave them here or message me on tumblr at tinygaycarm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The opening day at the amusement park proves to be a little bit of a challenge.

May 27th 3:17 pm

 

Carmilla picks at her nails as she’s waiting for the last round of people to finish up at her station – the bumper cars – when she hears LaF calling her name from the front office. Luckily there was no one else in line at the bumper cars, so she could afford to go see what was going on. After the last group of people finished up, she closed down the bumper cars for the moment and made her way to the front office.

Upon opening the door, she found LaF rummaging around on their hands and knees looking for something and a huge mess of papers covering the floor. Hearing Carmilla enter, LaF pops their head up from behind the desk they were currently looking behind.

“Quick, close the door!”

Carmilla gave them a confused look, but she did as she was asked. “What are you looking for? Did you finally lose your sanity?” She smirks at LaF, amused with herself.

“Haha, very funny. There seems to be some kind of animal loose in the office… like a raccoon or a rat or something.”

“So… you thought it would be a good idea to just keep it contained in here instead of, oh I dunno, just letting it leave?” Carmilla said, crossing her arms.

“It stole something from me…”

Carmilla turns around and starts to put her hand on the door handle to leave the office. “Look, let me just get Perry, she’ll be able to-“

“NO nonononono, don’t do that.”

Carmilla looks at them suspiciously. “And why not?”

“It may or may not have stolen my wedding ring…”

Carmilla sighs, remembering the time that LaF accidently dropped their wedding ring down the sink a couple years ago. “Not this again.” All of the sudden, she feels something fuzzy on her leg, so she looks down and sure enough, the animal was still in the office. She bends down to pick it up, it’s a small black kitten and it’s purring at her touch.

“That’s it! That’s the culprit!”

Carmilla rolls her eyes, putting the kitten into the crook of her left arm and lightly scratching behind its ears. “Uhm, how did this sweet little kitten steal your wedding ring exactly?”

“I’m not going to get into it! Now I need to get that ring back…” LaF stands up from their spot behind the desk and slowly makes their way towards where Carmilla is by the door. They grab for the kitten but Carmilla pulls it just out of their reach.

“What’s gotten into you? Give me the kitten!”

“I’m afraid it looks like this little ball of terror swallowed your ring. We’re going to have to wait it out.”

“But I can’t let Perry know that this happened again! Especially after last time…”

“So what was your plan once you found the animal? Did you think you were just going to cut it open and take the ring out yourself?”

“Well…”

“LaF, no! I’ll figure something out. In the meantime would you mind managing the bumper cars? I’m going to need to go into town with this little rascal.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about it, just watch over my station ok? I won’t tell Perry about this if you just keep your cool.”

“My cool… Right… Got it. Just hurry back!”

As Carmilla turns the door knob to the front office, she hears a knock on the door. When she gets it open, she sees Laura standing in front of her. Laura looks at Carmilla and then down at the kitten in her arms, and then back up at Carmilla with a very puzzled expression on her face.

“What’cha got there Carm?” Laura asks with a smile.

“It’s a long story but I’m going into town to help LaF with their… problem.”

“Oooh, can I come? I was coming to the front to tell LaF that it’s pretty dead at the boats and I wanted to take a break.”

“Ok… you can come, on one condition!”

“And what’s that?” Laura asks playfully.

“You have to carry the kitten... AND, you let me finish showing you around this weekend. Believe it or not, there are still a couple things I need to show you.”

“Ugh, fine.” Laura feigns annoyance, but her eyes show how she really feels. She starts giggling.

Carmilla nudges Laura lightly on the shoulder, “Shut up loser, you know you had a good time the other day.”

Laura doesn’t say anything in response, but she smiles at her as she takes the kitten out of Carmilla’s arms and puts it into hers. They start walking side by side out of the amusement park and into town. The walk isn’t too long, but Carmilla manages to tell Laura the story about what happened with the kitten.

“Looks like we got ourselves a little trouble maker here then don’t we?” Laura says playfully as she looks down at the kitten and gently boops its nose with the tip of her finger. It lets out a quiet ‘meow’ in response. “So how exactly are you planning on getting the ring back? I mean, don’t you kind of have to wait for it to, you know..?”

“One of the many things I love about this town is that they sell some pretty weird shit at their stores. I’ve been to the convenient store up here quite a few times and I’ve pretty much seen every product they have in stock. So, what we’re looking for in here is a laxative that’s safe for cats. They sell them in small containers here for like $1.”

Laura laughs confusedly, “That’s a strange thing for them to have in a convenience store don’t you think?”

Carmilla nods her head in response as she opens the door for Laura to go into the convenience store. She follows her inside and she and Laura (with the kitten still in her arms) go up to the front counter to ask the cashier where the cat laxatives are.

“They’re down the second isle on the right.” The man looks at the cat in Laura’s arms curiously. “Did this fella eat something he wasn’t supposed to?”

“Yeah… it kind of… ate LaF’s wedding ring, and I have to try to get it back before Perry notices that it’s gone.”

The man laughs at the story, “Well, you’ve come to the right place then!”

Carmilla leads Laura and the kitten down the second isle as they both scan the shelves for the cat laxatives.

“Found it!” Laura says, using her free hand to point at the shelf. Carmilla picks up the container and they make their way back towards the front desk. Before they check out, Carmilla asks Laura if she wants anything to drink and they decide that they’ll both get blue slushees. Carmilla pays for everything, even though Laura insisted on buying her own drink, and they leave the store and make their way to the park to sit down at the picnic table. Once there, Laura sits the kitten down on top of the table and they each set their drinks down as well.

“Ok, so I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work…” Carmilla starts, reading the back of the package, “But it seems like we just have to have the kitten drink a little bit of this formula stuff? It comes with a dropper. Do you think you could hold him while I give it a couple drops?”

“Sure.” Laura says as she gently grabs the kitten and places it into her arms. It purrs as it settles into the crook of her elbow and Laura gently pries its mouth open enough for Carmilla to put the dropper into its mouth. After three drops, Carmilla stops and they decide to let the kitten roam around on the grass a little bit and wait for it to do its business. It wasn’t the type of kitten that would run away, so they didn’t have to worry about that. Carmilla took a sip of her slushee as she watched Laura watch the kitten play around in the grass.

“We should name him!” Laura turns to face Carmilla with a gleam in her eyes.

“Did you have something in mind?” Carmilla asks.

“Well… I was kind of thinking about ‘Frodo’, you know, from Lord of the Rings? What do you think?”

Carmilla laughs, “I didn’t know you were a ‘Lord of the Rings’ nerd, cutie.”

Laura crosses her arms and turns back around to look at the kitten playing in the grass. “If you didn’t like the name, you could have just said that…”

Carmilla walks around to the other side of the table where Laura was sitting and playfully nudges her arm. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I like it! I just didn’t expect you to be someone who was interested in Lord of the Rings. Don’t tell anyone, but I actually have a poster from the ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ movie in my room.” She smiles at Laura and Laura smiles back.

“Now who’s the nerd?” Laura says, playfully smacking Carmilla on the arm.

“Yeah yeah, whatever.”

When they turn their attention back to Frodo, they see that he has done his business a couple feet away from them. Laura goes to pick Frodo up and leaves Carmilla to find the wedding ring.

After a few minutes of looking around and then using the restroom attached to the park to wash herself and LaF’s wedding ring off with lots and lots of soap and water, Carmilla walks with Laura back to the park with Frodo and their slushees in hand. When they reach the park’s entrance, they see Perry pacing around the front office’s door. She doesn’t look too happy.

“Hey Perry, uhm, what’s going on?”

“Don’t ‘hey Perry’ me missy! What’s going on? Why aren’t you and Laura here on your shifts? The park got quite busy in the past half an hour and we had to call in some of the extra staff who had today off. You weren’t answering your phone and LaF wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Explain yourself!”

LaF didn’t tell Perry about the ring getting eaten, so Carmilla decided she wouldn’t bring that up either. Laura was trying to hide the kitten behind herself so that Perry wouldn’t notice she was holding it, and both of them were hiding their slushees as well. Carmilla didn’t want Perry to think that they had just gone out for fun and were neglecting their responsibilities, even though technically, that’s kind of what ended up happening.

“Don’t blame Laura for this, she didn’t have anything to do with it, it was my mistake.”

Perry looked between the both of them and gave Laura the signal that she could go back to her station, and it didn’t seem like she’d noticed what she was holding in her hands. Carmilla saw Laura turn the corner towards the bumper cars to explain everything to LaF and figure out what to do with the kitten while she tried to compose a proper excuse to give to Perry.

“We both took our breaks because it was getting kind of dead at the time that we left. I must have forgotten my phone in the front office or something, and I didn’t realize how much time had gone by.”

Perry looked at her sternly and started wagging her finger at her when she was talking, “Carmilla, you know the rules. Don’t let this happen again or there will have to be consequences! Get back to your station and tell LaF to come into the front office to have a few words with me.”

Carmilla nodded as Perry made her way into the office. She, however, made her way towards the bumper cars, as Perry asked, and noticed the long line… And the extra staff member that was there helping LaF on her day off. She made her way over to the control deck where LaF was as the extra staff member (Emory) gave her the side eye.

Carmilla rummaged around in her pocket for a minute before taking out the ring and tapping LaF on the shoulder. They turned around with a jump and Carmilla handed them their ring.

“Thank you so much! Gosh what would I do without you?”

“I don’t know,” Carmilla said teasingly, “But you better go talk to Perry, and quickly. She didn’t look too happy when Laura and I came back.”

“I don’t recall telling you that you could take Laura with you into town, but ok… Oh, and by the way, Laura has decided to keep the kitten for herself. She called her dad to see if it would be ok with him, and oddly enough he said that he’d be delighted to have an animal in the house! So that got taken care of.”

Carmilla tapped her foot impatiently, she knew Perry wouldn’t be very happy about all of this… That is IF LaF was going to explain what happened to them. “Look I’m glad that all got sorted out, but you really _really_ need to go talk to Perry, like, right now.”

“Oh right! Ok then I’ll leave you to it!”

Carmilla watched LaF leave and then took her place back at the control deck just as this round was ending. The group had just gotten off of the ride and the next group had just gotten settled in when Carmilla saw Emory making her way towards her. She didn’t look very happy, but she didn’t look too pissed off either, which Carmilla was thankful for. Emory had a history of being very short tempered, well, at least with Carmilla.

“Looks like you got chewed out by Perry huh?” Emory taunted.

Carmilla scoffed, “Yeah, but it really couldn’t have been avoided so…”

“Had a day out on the town with your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend! We’ve only known each other for like, a week.”

Emory laughed, “Sure, sure.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Carmilla saw Ell approaching them. “Oh good, another asshole I have to deal with.”

“Hey, I can be nice to you… if I wanted to be… but I just don’t want to.” Emory said with a smirk as she playfully punched Carmilla in the arm. As Ell approached them, Emory went back to her position of monitoring the customers so Carmilla faced Ell, preparing herself for whatever was about to happen.

“Carm, do you think we could just, I dunno, put the past behind us? I know it seems like I’m a bitch to you all the time, and that’s because I have been in the past, but I really don’t want to have that kind of relationship anymore. I’m with Will now and that means that we still have to see each other pretty frequently, and I know that must be hard for you because we both treat you pretty poorly. I had a talk with Will and he told me that he wants us to be nicer to one another, and I agree with him.”

Carmilla looked at her in shock, she never thought she’d see the day that Ell would apologize to her for anything. “Has hell frozen over? Or am I missing something here?”

Ell sighed, “I know this is weird, it’s just… I was thinking a lot about how we used to be together and how I really did love you at one point, and then I was thinking about how we are now, and it broke my heart.”

“Ell, you cheated on me. What makes you think I’m just going to be willing to forgive you all of the sudden? You and Will have basically been the shittiest people you could be towards me and have made this situation literal hell on earth. Why would I want to reconcile?”

“Yeah, you’re right. And Will and I didn’t expect you to forgive us immediately, but we want to work towards this. We’ve decided that we don’t want you to feel miserable in your own home. Will talked to me a little bit more than you ever had about your and his growing up, and I really wish that would have been something that you’d shared with me when we were together. I can’t say that it would’ve made a difference in how I’ve treated you because I’ve been pretty childish, but I honestly still care about the both of you. I’m so sorry that I cheated on you with him, and I realize now how shitty that was. I was just going through a really hard time and I didn’t know how else to deal with it.”

“You could have talked to me Ell, I was your girlfriend!” Carmilla wasn’t believing a word that was coming out of Ell’s mouth. Although, she really did want to get past this.

“I know. And I’m sorry to bring this up during your shift, this probably wasn’t a very good time to do this. Will and I want to talk to you ourselves actually. If you wouldn’t mind talking to us tomorrow night?”

Deep down Carmilla really never stopped caring for her brother. Sure he had been a complete asshole to her in the past, but she’d done some things to him that she wished she hadn’t. Maybe he was finally realizing what he was doing to their relationship. She missed the good old days when they were kids and they would play outside in the sandbox on the playground at school together, and how they used to play hide and seek with their small group of friends. She missed Will, and she really hadn’t realized how much she missed him until now. Ell on the other hand… well, it would take her a very long time to get over how Ell treated her. She probably wouldn’t be able to forgive everything Ell did, it’s been years and she still hasn’t completely recovered.

Carmilla sighed, but she agreed that she’d talk to Will and Ell the next night. She missed her brother.

 

9:05 pm

 

The last few customers were leaving the amusement park for the day and Carmilla was just about getting ready to turn off the control deck to the bumper cars when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Laura, she didn’t have Frodo with her anymore, Carmilla figured Perry had let her take him home after LaF told her what happened. Oddly enough, Perry wasn’t really all that mad about the situation, she was more relieved with Carmilla’s problem solving skills than anything.

“Hey, so I was wondering…” Laura trailed off.

“Yes, cupcake?”

“Do you think that maybe you and I could mess around on the bumper cars?” She looked at Carmilla with playful eyes. “Just for like, 5 minutes? Please?”

Carmilla smiled at her and held her hand out for Laura to take and she guided them down to the arena where the bumper cars were located. Laura raced over to a blue one in the top right corner of the arena and Carmilla decided on a red one that wasn’t too far away from the entrance. Before Carmilla even got her bearings Laura bumped into her. Carmilla looked up at Laura, her face being gently illuminated by the glow of the lights above them.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be? It’s so on, cupcake.”

They spent around 15 minutes bumping into each other and laughing before Betty came walking down from her station at the Ferris wheel to tell them to wrap it up. Perry had told her to gather any remaining employees and tell them that the park was officially closing for the night.

“Ok love birds, time to wrap it up.” Betty teased.

Laura stuck out her tongue at her and Betty returned the gesture. Carmilla and Laura both got out of their bumper cars and headed back to the control deck and then Carmilla shut down the station for the night. Betty walked ahead of them towards the front entrance of the amusement park and Carmilla and Laura trailed behind her a little bit. They were walking side by side, Laura was trying to find her phone in the pocket of the jacket that she had brought with her and after she found it, she looked over at Carmilla who was gazing up at the stars, being extra careful not to trip as she walked.

“You know, I’ve always really liked the stars,” Carmilla started, “They hold this sense of security in them, it’s like whatever happens, they’ll always be there, waiting for you to look up into their luminosity.”

“I like that description.” Laura said, smiling at her.

As they reached the front gate, Carmilla saw LaF, Perry, Will, and Ell waiting for her at their car so that they could drive home, they looked pretty beat. It was their opening day after all but considering everything, Carmilla thought it went pretty well.

“I had fun today.” Laura said. She looked out into the parking lot and spotted her dad waiting in his car, she waved to him and he motioned for her to get into the car so they could go home.

Carmilla waved to him too, she saw him smile. “So did I cutie. I’ll text you later about this weekend alright?”

“Ok.” Laura said with a smile. “Goodnight Carm.”

“Goodnight Laura.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this chapter! I'm so so so sorry that I didn't update it sooner, I don't really have any excuses, but I hope it was worth the wait! I kind of decided half way through that I didn't really like the whole 'Will and Ell are mean to Carmilla' thing, so I tried to fix that as best as I could, and next chapter will go into that a little bit more, so sorry if it seemed a little sloppy or rushed or anything. As always, feel free to comment here or hmu on tumblr at tinygaycarm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, you can leave them here or shoot me an ask on tumblr. My url is tinygaycarm.


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